Genome BC Investing in BC Technology and Manufacturing

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - Jan. 23, 2014) - Automation and robotics are integral aspects of scientific research and efficiency is key to its effectiveness. Coastal Genomics, a BC-based company has developed "Ranger Technology", which automates a process known as agarose gel size selection to isolate DNA fragments of a desired length which is necessary for sequencing analysis. Until now agarose gel size selection has largely been a manual, low efficiency process used to prepare DNA samples for sequencing. Ranger Technology now enables processing of up to 96 DNA samples, reduces operating costs by 35% compared to the manual approach, processes DNA samples three times as quickly and reduces workspace requirements four-fold.

Genome BC is supporting product development and facilitating early access to customers through its Strategic Opportunities Fund for Industry (SOFi) program. The SOFi program seeks to accelerate commercial potential with local companies and facilitate collaboration with industry.

"The work being done by Coastal Genomics, the building of tangible products right here in our province, is an essential component of keeping our vibrant life sciences community on the cutting-edge," says Dr. Alan Winter, President and CEO of Genome BC. "The Ranger system is also another example of a significant tool being developed from the Genome BC Technology Development platform."

Ranger Technology assemblies will be manufactured in Canada and then shipped to international end-users. Coastal Genomics already has a staff of four full-time employees and a stable of local contractors helping to get the work completed by June of 2014. Demand for the product is on the rise.

"We estimate that the market addressed by our offering will grow from $20 million in 2012 to $100 million in 2016," says Matthew Nesbitt, President of Coastal Genomics. "Our Ranger Technology generates the highest quality material for downstream applications at a rate and cost that accommodates groups of any throughput."

Ranger Technology effectively allows DNA sequencing service providers, gene synthesis companies and others, to establish the use of agarose gel size selection for pipelines that have been growing explosively due to revolutions in the field of DNA research. Research groups will be able to improve the value of high-cost processes that benefit from custom, discriminating size selection by using Ranger Technology.

About Genome British Columbia:

Genome British Columbia is a catalyst for the life sciences cluster on Canada's West Coast, and manages a cumulative portfolio of over $625M in research projects and science and technology platforms. Working with governments, academia and industry across sectors such as forestry, fisheries, agriculture, environment, bioenergy, mining and human health, the goal of the organization is to generate social and economic benefits for British Columbia and Canada. Genome BC is supported by the Province of British Columbia, the Government of Canada through Genome Canada and Western Economic Diversification Canada and more than 300 international public and private co-funding partners. www.genomebc.ca

About Coastal Genomics:

Coastal Genomics Inc. develops and markets automated solutions for the sample preparation needs of the Life Sciences community. We have partnered with Hamilton Robotics to port our Ranger Technology for automated size selection to the Microlab Nimbus automated workstation. Our instrument can recover target DNA while generating complementary quality control analytics for up to 96 samples in a run. Ranger Technology will be well received by groups that are looking to collapse size selection and analysis workflows into a single automated run.